Various kinds of construction strip, such as ceiling molding, skirting board, door frame, window frame, and furniture molding, are commonly used in interior construction and decoration. A conventional construction strip, no matter it is used as a ceiling molding, a skirting board, a door frame, a window frame, or a furniture molding, as shown in FIG. 1, comprises an elongated wooden strip body 10 having a predetermined length and stylish cross section. The strip body 10 has a rear surface 11 for attaching to the wall by means of nailing or gluing and a waved front surface 12 for decorating purpose.
Normally, a layer of paint must be provided on all exposed longitudinal surfaces of the strip body 10 so as to protect the wooden strip body 10 from moisture and to match the color painting of the wall or ceiling where the strip body 10 is affixed thereon. In view of such painting layer, the conventional wooden construction strip bears a plurality of unsolved shortcomings as follows:
(1) The painting process of the wooden construction strip is very troublesome and costly. The worker has to paint each construction strip manually before affixing to the wall. A lot of work and time must be involved that relatively increases the construction cost. Some construction strip manufacturers provide painted construction strips in market in order to lessen the labor of the constructors. The most efficient way for mass production of painted construction strip in factory is to spray paint on the wooden strip body by a painting machine. The painting machine generally comprises at least a spray gun which is driven to move up and down repeatedly and a feeding device for transmitting mass number of wooden strip bodies vertically towards the spray gun. While each strip body is passing by the spray gun, the strip body is driven to rotate and the spray gun is activated to move up and down and spray painting onto the rotating strip body, so that a layer of paint is applied on all longitudinal surfaces of the strip body.
How to apply painting evenly on all longitudinal surfaces of the strip body is one of the major problems of the spraying method of every strip body manufacturer. High efficiency and expensive painting machine is suggested to use in factory in order to produce strip bodies with better painting quality. Moreover, no matter what kind of painting machine is used, large amount of costly painting will be sprayed to the air during the spraying process, that causes unavoidable waste and pollution. Many chemicals in paint are harmful to human body. In other words, all workers are exposed in a hazardous environment, therefore how to collect those waste painting becomes another big problem to the manufacturer.
(2) The painting layer on the wooden strip body has poor resistance against scratching. During transportation and constructing procedure, there is a great chance to cause scratch on the exterior painting layer of the construction strip and that, due to the soft nature of the wooden strip body, the strip body also has a big risk of being damaged by scratching or accidentally impacting.
(3) The edge portion of the painting layer of the construction strip will easily be peeled off when the construction strip is cut to desired size and shape.
(4) If plastic or metal made tubes or strips are used, it is more difficult to provide a durable painting layer thereon.
(5) The contour design of the construction strip must be limited to avoid any sharp indention or concave edge because it is very difficult to evenly apply or spray paint on such area.